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Constitutional Lawyer: Will the Supreme Court Restore “a Constitutional Republic” or “Ratify the Present [“Vaccine” Mandate] Tyranny… Police State”?

September 01, 2021

Today, Constitutional lawyer Scott Lively said if the Supreme Court “justices uphold the tradition (and core legal principle) of honoring religious exemptions from government health mandates, we will know there is still hope of a restoration to a constitutional republic. If they ratify the present tyranny, we will know the power of the current Marxist dictatorship will most likely be consolidated and eventually all ‘constitutional law’ will be reinterpreted to serve the police state”:

To be clear, as a small ministry with a very modest budget and assets, we have no ability to intervene on behalf of our members and non-member affiliates in the courts, but at the same time we expect this issue (if not necessarily this specific case) to require litigation, probably all the way to the Supreme Court. Their ruling on the matter will be one of the best indications of America’s future. If the justices uphold the tradition (and core legal principle) of honoring religious exemptions from government health mandates, we will know there is still hope of a restoration to a constitutional republic. If they ratify the present tyranny, we will know the power of the current Marxist dictatorship will most likely be consolidated and eventually all “constitutional law” will be reinterpreted to serve the police state.It is also likely that the lower courts, especially in the deep blue states and cities, will side with the tyrants, and so we’re probably in for a long ping-pong match in which our religious right to bodily self-determination may depend on the jurisdiction we live in and the latest opinion of the lower courts there.WHAT TO DO:We do not presume to advise you of your legal rights or strategy. That is for your attorney to do. If you cannot afford to fight a legal battle on your own, we suggest you contact one of the Christian public interest firms such as Liberty Counsel — which in our opinion is the premier Christian law center in America. As you might expect, they are up to their eyeballs in requests for help, so adjust your expectations accordingly.Purely as a practical matter, what we suggest if you encounter a situation like our member in Massachusetts, warn the person handling your case that if they will not grant you a religious exemption without submitting to an inquisition about your faith, that you will get your lawyer involved and file a formal complaint with the HR department. If they don’t back down, follow through. If they fire you for refusal to comply with their “vaccine” mandate, you will at least have established a stronger position for litigation. And don’t forget to document your communications as you go along. But, again, seek your own legal counsel even as to these practical suggestions before you take action. [Scott Lively’s Mission Dispatch, September 1, 2021,Observations and Action on Current Events, History and Theology.Subscribe HERE.] Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He wants you to do now and next. In this silence remember God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost – Three Divine Persons yet One God, has an ordered universe where you can know truth and falsehood as well as never forget that He wants you to have eternal happiness with Him as his son or daughter by grace. Make this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading anything here or anywhere else on the Internet.

Francis Notes:

– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:

“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.”
(The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)

Saint Robert Bellarmine, also, said “the Pope heretic is not deposed ipso facto, but must be declared deposed by the Church.”
[https://archive.org/stream/SilveiraImplicationsOfNewMissaeAndHereticPopes/Silveira%20Implications%20of%20New%20Missae%20and%20Heretic%20Popes_djvu.txt]

– “If Francis is a Heretic, What should Canonically happen to him?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/12/if-francis-is-heretic-what-should.html

– “Could Francis be a Antipope even though the Majority of Cardinals claim he is Pope?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/03/could-francis-be-antipope-even-though.html

 –  LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers,” December 4, 2017:

The AAS guidelines explicitly allows “sexually active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”

–  On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:

“The AAS statement… establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense.”

– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:

“Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.”

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.

Election Notes: 

– Intel Cryptanalyst-Mathematician on Biden Steal: “212Million Registered Voters & 66.2% Voting,140.344 M Voted…Trump got 74 M, that leaves only 66.344 M for Biden” [http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/intel-cryptanalyst-mathematician-on.html?m=1]

– Will US be Venezuela?: Ex-CIA Official told Epoch Times “Chávez started to Focus on [Smartmatic] Voting Machines to Ensure Victory as early as 2003”: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/will-us-be-venezuela-ex-cia-official.html– Tucker Carlson’s Conservatism Inc. Biden Steal Betrayal is explained by “One of the Greatest Columns ever Written” according to Rush: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/tucker-carlsons-conservatism-inc-biden.html?m=1 – A Hour which will Live in Infamy: 10:01pm November 3, 2020: 
http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/01/a-hour-which-will-live-in-infamy-1001pm.html?m=1 What is needed right now to save America from those who would destroy our God given rights is to pray at home or in church and if called to even go to outdoor prayer rallies in every town and city across the United States for God to pour out His grace on our country to save us from those who would use a Reichstag Fire-like incident to destroy our civil liberties. [Is the DC Capitol Incident Comparable to the Nazi Reichstag Fire Incident where the German People Lost their Civil Liberties?: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/is-dc-capital-incident-comparable-to.html?m=1 and Epoch Times Show Crossroads on Capitol Incident: “Anitfa ‘Agent Provocateurs‘”: 
http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/epoch-times-show-crossroads-on-capital.html?m=1] 
Pray an Our Father now for the grace to know God’s Will and to do it. SHARESHAREComments

Islamism Triumphant

By: W.R. Wordsworth

American Thinker

September 1, 2021

(Emphasis added)

The catastrophic implications of the incompetent U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan are difficult to exaggerate.

The effects of this debacle are apt to reverberate well beyond the lifetime of anyone reading this, for there can be no doubt that this perceived Taliban victory has infused new life into the Islamist campaign against the West. The roots of Islamism run deep and cannot be reduced to the kinds of conspicuous and easily understandable complaints that are often identified as “root causes” of violent political outbursts. Violent Islamism was invented as an effort to make sense of and reverse the Islamic world’s perceived decline, and this is what drives the Islamists to prosecute a holy war against the West.

Islam’s history began with a series of sweeping triumphs, as disparate tribes united under a single religious confession and conquered vast swathes of territory, eventually growing into a great civilization. These early successes were seen as proof that the Muslim community enjoyed God’s favor. The Islamic world rivaled the West in wealth, power, and influence; it was a dynamic and effective competitor on the world stage. It no longer is and has not been for centuries. The Muslim world stands diminished, divided, and overshadowed. To the Islamists, the only explanation for this tragic turn of events is that God has withdrawn his favor from the Muslim community, and this could only mean that the Muslim community had ceased to heed the teachings of God’s messenger, Muhammad. To the Islamists, a religious revival is key to regaining what they see as their rightful place in the world, and this revival requires the embrace and prosecution of violent jihad.

Like any other monomaniacal totalitarian activist, the Islamist sees the world as totally wrong and in need of drastic, violent correction. The Sunni fanatics who have once again taken possession of Afghanistan see the world through the eyes of the chief inventor of Islamism, Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966). Qutb articulated his vision in a large body of writings, which include a voluminous commentary on the Quran. Qutb taught that the contemporary world has relapsed into a state of jahiliyyah — that period of heedlessness and godlessness that preceded the revelation of the Quran. In his view, jahiliyyah afflicted not only the non-Muslim world, but had also come to characterize the corrupt, decadent Muslim world as well — what passes for Islam is not true Islam, and most nominal Muslims are not true Muslims. The Islamist project may be summarized as an effort to roll back jahiliyyah, thereby reviving the fortunes of the Muslim community to assume its rightful place on the world stage.

It must be stressed that violent Islamists place the vast majority of practicing Muslims among their enemies. In 1978 Egyptian President Anwar Sadat signed a peace treaty with the state of Israel; Sadat was assassinated in 1981 by a radical Islamist group whose members included Ayman al-Zawahiri, a physician who would eventually succeed Osama bin Laden as head of al Qaeda. At the time of Sadat’s assassination, Zawahiri was arrested and imprisoned for his suspected role in the conspiracy. In footage shot at the time, Zawahiri and his co-defendants are seen in a prison cell and Zawahiri can be heard screaming at his jailers “We are Muslims!” Now, one might at first be inclined to naively assume that he is appealing to a sense of solidarity (as if to say, “We’re like you — we too are Muslims”), but what he was proclaiming to his jailers was in effect: “Unlike you – we are Muslims!” The Islamists believe they are the only true Muslims — the only genuine followers of God on earth.

The present state of the world — with non-Muslim states ascendant and dominant — is intolerable to the Islamists. Power and prosperity belong rightfully only to those who acknowledge God’s supremacy. Following Qutb, the Islamists hold that any society that fails to organize itself as an Islamic theocracy (as the Taliban does) is guilty of denying God’s sovereignty and is worthy of destruction. No human community has a right to govern itself — all human communities belong under the rule of Islam. The West’s rejection of the theocratic ideal makes it an enemy of true Islam. The Islamists believe themselves mandated to restore the rule of God on earth (indistinguishable, of course, from their own rule).

What lessons are to be drawn from this? In the first place, we should recognize we didn’t ask for this conflict — we didn’t provoke it. One needn’t provoke an enemy like this to incur its hostility; the mere act of existing in defiance of their religious expectations is sufficient to earn a death sentence. Since we did not choose this conflict, we cannot unilaterally choose to end it; withdrawal from the most active battlespace will not end the war. Any assumption that it would is simply delusional. 

In the second place, the enemy’s religious expectations are key to crafting their ultimate defeat. The enemy believes God favors them. The key to defeating them is to disabuse them of this notion — to persuade them that, despite their pretensions, God does not favor them and is not about to reward them with mastery of the world. This requires defeating them consistently over time. Every defeat, every setback, every battlefield failure threatens to fatally undermine their confidence, demoralizing them and calling into question the soundness of their vocation. A clear pattern of defeat would ultimately dry up their recruiting, shrink their movement, and effectively end the war.

How do matters presently stand? To begin with, one should recognize that an understanding of the power and appeal of the kind of religious fanaticism the Taliban promotes is simply beyond the capacity of our latte-sipping, pronoun-parsing, ladder-climbing “elites.” 

The Biden administration’s obscene mishandling of Afghanistan has handed the Taliban a monumental victory, and the victors will now cede all glory to God. Their religious expectations have been fulfilled, and God’s favor now shines brightly upon them. It is difficult to imagine how the enemy could be any more highly encouraged. The impression of triumph we have handed the Taliban will prolong the war they started on 9/11 by bolstering their belief in their own divinely appointed mission. The Biden administration has effectively endorsed the myth of Islamic supremacy that fuels Islamist belligerence, and the consequences may be felt for generations.

And for what? Why cut and run so precipitously from what would seem to have been a militarily manageable situation? Was it really so, a calloused, senile, leering, corrupt, barely conscious, suited-up mannequin could deliver an applause line on 9/11 about ending a war he clearly never understood, and could not be bothered to take seriously? Was it so, the general in charge of this mess could go back to agonizing over “white rage”? 

It is difficult to imagine the nation being worse led than it currently is. These repulsive clowns have handed an entire nation — along with troves of highly sophisticated American arms — to a barbaric gang whose main peacetime preoccupation would seem to be the wholesale brutalization of women and girls.

Those of us who champion the cause of the West see the West faced with myriad and diverse challenges. Some of these (like Islamism) come from outside our shared culture, while others (like postmodern fascism and critical theory racism) have emerged from within. Our culture, in all its richness and intellectual diversity, can equip us to rise to these challenges, and we should endeavor to do this, even though we are at present in no position to outshout the charlatans and imposters who have worked so hard to hollow it out from within and some of whom have just presided over a devastating and unnecessary military defeat.

There’s a Problem in the 

Upper Reaches of Our Military

Somehow our new woke Pentagon is hell-bent 

on losing the trust of the American people.

By: Victor Davis Hanson

The Patriot Post

September 2, 2021

(Emphasis added)

It is the beginning of a never-ending bad dream. Joe Biden and the Pentagon have managed to birth a new terrorist haven, destroy much of U.S. strategic deterrence, and alienate our allies and much of the country.

In the hours after the horrific deaths of 13 service members, we have been reassured by our military that our partnership with the Taliban to provide security for our flights was wise. We were told that the terrorist victors share similar goals to ours in a hasty American retreat from Kabul.

We were reminded that Afghan refugees (unlike U.S. soldiers) will not be forced to be vaccinated on arrival. Such statements are either untrue or absurd.

On the very day of the attack that killed American troops, the sergeant major of the U.S. Army reminded us in a tweet that diversity is our strength, commemorating not the dead but Women’s Equality Day. If so, then is the opposite of diversity — unity — our weakness? Will such wokeness ensure that we do not abandon the Bagram air base in the middle of the night without opposition?

The chief of staff at the Office of Naval Intelligence warned the ONI’s active duty and retired service members that they must not criticize Biden, their commander in chief, over the Afghanistan fiasco. The office correctly cited prohibitions found in the Uniform Code of Military Justice barring any disrespect shown to senior government leadership.

Indeed, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps was relieved of his command for posting a video accurately blaming military and civilian leadership for the Afghanistan nightmare.

Yet until Jan. 20, retired top brass had constantly smeared their elected commander in chief with impunity.

Recently retired Gen. Michael Hayden retweeted a horrific suggestion that unvaccinated Trump supporters should be put on planes back to Afghanistan, where they presumably would be left to die. Hayden earlier had compared Trump’s border facilities to Nazi death camps.

Other retired high-profile military officials variously called their president an emulator of Nazi tactics, a veritable Mussolini, a liar, and deserving of removal from office sooner than later. None of these retired four-stars faced the sort of repercussions that the Office of Naval Intelligence just warned about.

More than 50 former intelligence officials on the eve of the November election signed a letter suggesting that incriminating emails found on Hunter Biden’s missing laptop might be “Russian disinformation.” They used their stature for political purposes to convince the American people that the story was a lie.

Retired Gen. Joseph Dunford and retired Adm. Mike Mullen recently blasted retired brass who had questioned Biden’s cognitive ability. OK. But they should have issued a similar warning earlier when the violations of fellow retired officers were even more egregious in election year 2020.

Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, apologized for doing a photo op with Trump, erroneously buying into the narrative that Trump had ordered rioters cleared from Lafayette Square for the staged picture. Worse, he leaked to journalists that he was so angry with Trump that he “considered” resigning.

Think of the irony. If Milley considered a politicized resignation to rebuke Trump over the false charge, then surely, he could consider a real resignation after overseeing the worst military disaster of the last half-century in Kabul.

Milley had promised to root out white supremacy from the ranks while recommending that his soldiers read Ibram X. Kendi’s racialist diatribes.

Something is terribly wrong in the ranks of America’s top commanders that reflects something wrong with the country.

The Pentagon needs to stop virtue-signaling about diversity days and culturally sensitive food for Afghan refugees. Instead, can it just explain why the Bagram air base was abandoned by night, or why Taliban terrorists are our supposed “partners” in organizing our surrender and escape?

Which general allowed more than $85 billion in American weapons to fall to the Taliban – a sum equal to the price of seven new U.S. aircraft carriers?

Who turned over to the Taliban the lists of Americans and allied Afghans to be evacuated?

Who left behind biometric devices that the Taliban are now using to hunt down our former Afghan friends?

Somehow our new woke Pentagon is hell-bent on losing the trust of the American people — along with the wars it fights abroad.

Joe Biden believes he’s above the law but the Supreme Court just set him straight

September 2, 2021

The Biden administration has no regard for the rule of law.

They believe they can implement policies in any means necessary even if it’s blatantly illegal.

No doubt Joe Biden believes he’s above the law, but the Supreme Court just set him straight.

Joe Biden is a career politician who is used to getting his way.

He legislates outside the law and sees nothing wrong with it so long as his radical policies are implemented.

In June, the Supreme Court ruled that the eviction moratorium could stand with Justice Brett Kavanaugh stating he only ruled to let it remain in place because it was set to expire in a few weeks and only Congress has the power to extend it.

Well, Joe Biden didn’t care that only Congress could extend it.

In one of the most glaring acts of totally ignoring the law, Biden had the Centers for Disease Control issue a new rule blocking landlords from evicting tenants who refused to pay rent.

The CDC doesn’t have the power to issue such rules, but that didn’t matter to Biden – he had them do it anyway.

This very clearly upset the justices.

Biden was making a mockery of the Supreme Court.

So late last week the Supreme Court threw out Biden’s CDC implemented eviction moratorium.

“Careful review of that record makes clear that the applicants are virtually certain to succeed on the merits of their argument that the CDC has exceeded its authority. It would be one thing if Congress had specifically authorized the action that the CDC has taken. But that has not happened. Instead, the CDC has imposed a nationwide moratorium on evictions in reliance on a decades-old statute that authorizes it to implement measures like fumigation and pest extermination. It strains credulity to believe that this statute grants the CDC the sweeping authority that it asserts,” the ruling read.https:

It continued to state that the moratorium hurt potential renters who are being denied housing because landlords are not allowed to remove delinquent tenants.

That’s something Joe Biden doesn’t seem to care about.

Joe Biden, in fact, admitted that issuing the order unilaterally through the CDC may be illegal.

He’s not even hiding his illegal activities anymore.

This man is not fit to serve as President of the United States of America when he would knowingly and willfully break the law. 

A Supreme Court That Capitulates On Roe V. Wade Will Unleash A Whirlwind

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Published on August 30, 2021

The Federalist

By NATHANAEL BLAKE

It profits a man nothing to gain the world if he loses his soul—and the deal is even worse if the earthly gain is just a chance at the fleeting respect of a few law professors. Nonetheless, that is how the left is hoping to tempt Brett Kavanaugh as the Supreme Court considers a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade.

Writing at National Review Online, Ed Whelan observes that such a sales pitch from Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman “isn’t subtle.” Feldman does not attempt to argue that Roe and subsequent decisions such as Casey are correct as a matter of law and constitutional interpretation. Instead, he resorts to mean girl tactics—only cool justices get to guest lecture at the Ivy League table.

He offers Kavanaugh the approval of the left-wing legal establishment in exchange for voting to preserve the invented constitutional right to abortion on demand. Of course, Feldman cannot promise to deliver on his end of the bargain—he admits the left might still hate Kavanaugh even if Kavanaugh gives in to their demands.

This is just a more personal version of the left’s efforts to intimidate conservative judges, as seen in the recent threats to pack the court. Sometimes these tactics work, as seen in Chief Justice Roberts’ reported switch to save Obamacare, or in Anthony Kennedy’s vote in 1992 to stand by Roe v. Wade. But the consequences of unprincipled political calculation by the court cut both ways.

The justices should do their duty and follow the law and Constitution to the best of their abilities. In the case at hand, this means overturning Roe and Casey, which are legal abominations, exercises of raw power divorced from the text and history of the Constitution. If they do consider additional factors, they should only be further motivated to overturn Roe.

The most important consideration is the wickedness of the radical regime of abortion on demand established by Roe and confirmed by Casey. In the age of ultrasound, we know what abortion is, and who it kills. The images eagerly shared on social media and stuck to the fridge condemn the atrocity of our abortion regime, in which the child whose features can be seen on the screen, and whose movements can be felt in the womb, has less legal protection than livestock.

This acceptance of, and reliance on, the violence of abortion poisons society. It turns what ought to be the loving, primordial union of mother, father, and child into a battleground of selfish interests. Abortion hardens the hearts it doesn’t stop.

Overturning Roe will not in itself end these evils, for the justices are unlikely to extend 14th Amendment protections to the unborn, although there is an originalist case for doing so. Abortion policy would therefore return to the states, leaving the pro-life movement to face a grueling state-by-state fight. But at least our democratic victories will no longer be overridden by the caprice of federal judges.

Roe has damaged our republic and distorted our politics. It is the leading example of the Supreme Court acting as an unelected super-legislature and imposing its will on the nation, and upholding Roe will only further delegitimize the court.

It is not only leftist law professors and legacy media editorial boards who have opinions about these matters, Many Americans long ago realized that the Supreme Court often rules as it wills, not according to the law or Constitution. The justices may hate the ugliness of their confirmation hearings, but the court brought that on itself by becoming the national abortion policy tribunal.

Millions of voters have supported the conservative legal movement on the promise that it would fight to get courts out of the abortion business. Thus, if the Supreme Court, with a 6-3 Republican-appointed majority, voted to uphold Roe and Casey, the decision might well blow up the conservative legal movement for good. Most of the voters who care about the courts are not interested in Chevron deference or other (to a layperson) esoteric legal doctrines. Rather, they want Roe overturned.

Thus, upholding Roe would turbocharge populist critiques of the originalist project and its institutions. Although President Donald Trump picked some of these justices, their failures will not be held against him and other populists, but against the conservative legal establishment Trump relied upon in his selections.

Indeed, if the court stands by Roe it might upend the entire Republican Party, many of whose voters are tired of an establishment that overpromises and underdelivers. The full reckoning is unpredictable, but GOP self-immolation is a real possibility, leading to either Democratic dominance or a triumphant populist GOP (or both in succession). The Republican base will not shrug off another total betrayal.

The Supreme Court might attempt to split the baby and uphold the abortion restrictions at issue in Dobbs without overturning Roe and Casey. The specifics of this case makes that difficult, but there is nothing but their self-respect to keep the justices from trying.

Of course, that would just leave them back in the same place in a few more years. The time for the justices of the Supreme Court to get out of the abortion business is now—for the sake of unborn children, the Supreme Court, the country, and their own souls.

Nathanael Blake is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Photo Architect of the Capitol / Flickr

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Published on September 1, 2021

Newsweek

By ERIKA BACHIOCHI

The Supreme Court will review the constitutionality of a Mississippi ban on pre-viability abortions in Dobbs v. Jackson this upcoming term. Its decision will likely turn not on the evident humanity of 15-week-old fetuses; nor on the fact that nearly every other Western nation protects preborn children at this stage of development; nor even on Americans’ vast popular support for restricting abortion after 12 weeks.

Rather, the Mississippi law will likely stand or fall depending on whether a majority of the justices have bought into the elite academic consensus upon which Roe v. Wade was reaffirmed in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The Casey court asserted that, regardless of its views on the merits of the Roe decision, women’s “reliance” on abortion to “participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation” dictated that the 1973 decision must stand.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was not yet on the Court when Casey came down, but the late scholar-turned-justice famously advanced the equality argument for abortion rights. Given the argument’s importance in the Casey decision, the current justices should ask themselves, as they review Dobbs, whether women’s equality is actually promoted by the abortion license. A growing number of women—including the 240 scholars and professionals who, with several pro-life feminist organizations, filed an amicus brief in Dobbs—think not.

When in 1973 the Supreme Court struck down the abortion laws of every state, it did so on the basis of a medically oriented “right to privacy” discovered in various provisions of the Constitution. Yet Roe‘s actual reach extended far beyond the limited exceptions the medical community had sought, and instead granted the wholesale repeal for which pro-choice feminists had marched in the 1970 Women’s Strike. But Roe‘s privacy rationale was not to the feminists’ liking. By then, feminist attorneys had begun to make equality arguments for abortion rights, suggesting that since the burdens of carrying and bearing children were borne exclusively by women—after all, according to one legal brief from 1969, “the man who shares responsibility for her pregnancy can and often does just walk away”—legal equality required that the woman enjoy the same freedom, through abortion.

Undoubtedly inspired by these early equality arguments for abortion rights—and seeking to ground the new right in something other than the widely criticized right to privacy—UCLA law professor Kenneth Karst wrote a 1977 law review article that garnered much interest in the legal academy. In it, he sought to connect the sex discrimination cases of the early 1970s with the contraception and abortion cases of the same time frame. This new constellation of rights—rights that had initially been determined independently of one another—was now necessary, according to Karst, for women to achieve “equal citizenship.”

A decade earlier, leading population control advocate Lawrence Lader had argued that widespread abortion access would allow women to enjoy sex free of encumbrances like men did and to make their way in the male-dominated workplace. Professor Karst now suggested that abortion rights would enable women to frustrate sexual double standards and to manage the social reality that fathers do not take responsibility for their children.

Neither Karst nor Lader (nor even the feminist attorneys who wrote the 1969 brief) seemed to reckon with the fact that advocating for abortion rights as a legal and cultural response to the failures of men leaves the burden for children and the management of fertility squarely on the shoulders (or, better, bodies) of women—exactly where they have always been.

The year after Karst published his article, then-professor Ruth Bader Ginsburg explicitly deployed his “equal citizenship” argument. “Not only the sex discrimination cases, but the cases on contraception, abortion, and illegitimacy as well,” she paraphrased, “present various facets of a single issue: the roles women are to play in society.” Once on the Supreme Court, in a 2007 dissent in an abortion case, Ginsburg officially announced her distaste for Roe‘s “privacy” rationale and articulated Karst’s “citizenship” approach instead: “As Casey comprehended…legal challenges to undue restrictions on abortion procedures do not seek to vindicate some generalized notion of privacy; rather, they center on a woman’s autonomy to determine her life’s course, and thus to enjoy equal citizenship stature.”

But Karst’s approach to equal citizenship, adopted by the highest-ranking women’s rights advocate in the country (and nearly every pro-choice academic today), departs not at all from the troubling accounts of citizenship that kept women from enjoying equal civil and political rights in our country for so long.

Under the social contract theories of various Enlightenment thinkers—who influenced how our country’s Founders thought about citizenship—self-interested, autonomous individuals contract with one another to form a government that in turn secures their rights. Women and children exist in each theorist’s “state of nature,” but when civil society comes into being, only male individuals are counted as full “citizens.” Women disappear into the newly erected private sphere; their traditional duties of care render them as dependent as their children, incapable of the autonomy necessary for full participation in liberal citizenship. In the Karst/Ginsburg approach to citizenship, women can now be full and equal citizens too—if they but imitate the autonomous male citizen and leave their children behind.

It’s no surprise, therefore, that the modern theories of women’s rights built upon this liberal edifice would eventually place abortion rights at their very center. If participation in liberal citizenship requires one to be unencumbered by natural obligations and beholden only to that which is voluntarily chosen, unexpected pregnancy and time-consuming caregiving find no place in them. Indeed, Thomas Hobbes’ state of nature—characterized by radically autonomous individuals who are “equal” solely in their capacity to engage in a “war of all against all”—is not so dissimilar from the “rat race” of late capitalist societies. Women with children are at an obvious disadvantage compared with those who have no such caregiving responsibilities; they may feel the need to discard their dependents just to survive.

The time has come instead to discard the male-normative theories of equality on which the putative right to abortion is constructed today. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Let’s make room, as earlier generations of women’s rights advocates did, for vulnerable and dependent children, and for the women—and men—responsible for their care.

Erika Bachiochi, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, co-authored an amicus brief on behalf of 240 women scholars and professionals in Dobbs v Jackson. This op-ed is adapted from her new book, The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision (Notre Dame).

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EPPC Fellow Erika Bachiochi is a legal scholar specializing in Equal Protection jurisprudence, feminist legal theory, Catholic social teaching, and sexual ethics. 

 EPP

The Texas Abortion Law Is Justice on Display

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Published on September 2, 2021

Kentucky Today

By ANDREW T. WALKER

The seemingly unthinkable has happened in the Republic of Texas: Abortion is effectively outlawed, and Roe v. Wade severely defanged. That is a sentence I could not fathom writing a mere few months ago. But national elections have real consequences, and the current composition of the Supreme Court may be signaling that it intends to throw a wrench at the abortion industry’s unchecked hold over our society.

In a late-night 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court has refused to intervene and block a peculiar Texas law, SB 8, from taking effect. I am not a lawyer. I am a Christian ethicist, so I will not deny that this law has legal technicalities above my pay grade to assess expertly. The law purports to ban abortion once a heartbeat is detected (around the sixth week) and holds certain individuals personally liable for performing or aiding and abetting an abortion. In effect, private citizens can sue abortionists for performing an abortion and sue those persons who aid in the procurement of an abortion. Interestingly, the law does not allow a cause of action against the woman who procures the abortion. The bill also provides exemptions for medical emergencies. The bill does not ban abortion prior to detecting a fetal heartbeat, so it still technically allows for the termination of a pregnancy. But since that happens so early in a pregnancy, the law is a monumental step in the right direction of enacting justice.

What I can comment on, however, are the moral components behind the bill’s intent and what this bill’s enforcement means for the calling of government and our local churches.

The bill reflects a fundamental truth of human existence: Life is good and worthy of legal recognition and legal protection. This truth reflects what ought to be a clear implication of our Declaration and our Constitution—that abortion is unconstitutional. In this, the bill parallels with the most basic fact of our biblical confession: God is the Creator and Author of life (Gen. 1:1; Acts 3:15). Life and death are in his hands, not ours (Job 12:10). He creates all human beings in his image, which is the basis for our understanding that all humans possess intrinsic and inviolable dignity and equality (Genesis 1:27). Personhood is therefore not a mysterious category arbitrarily bestowed by a threshold of consciousness but from the moment of conception. In no uncertain terms, this means that abortion is an unthinkable act of violence inflicted upon innocent, defenseless image-bearers. The moral tragedy of abortion is hard to put into words, so SB 8 purports to rectify a grave injustice.

That is what the regime of Roe v. Wade has wrought. It tests the boundaries of our social compact by almost singularly defining our political landscape over the last fifty years. At stake is the central question: Does government, of any form, have the power to murder innocent life? The answer is unequivocally “no,” which means our government has acted heinously, unjustly, and unlawfully for almost fifty years before the Court that ultimately matters—God’s Court (Ps. 65:4). In its wake is the death of an estimated sixty million persons. It is near impossible to comprehend a sum of that figure.

Abortion is an assault on God’s holiness, a violation of Scriptural authority, and a terrible precedent for political justice and public ethics. It also violates the natural law, which God decrees as the moral order for establishing just law. Like Martin Luther King, Jr. said in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, “A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law […] Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.” Abortion is nothing else but an unjust law in that its intention and result is to degrade and extinguish human personality unquestionably. Enter Texas.

It is popular to insist that “morality cannot be legislated.” Those who insist that morality cannot be legislated only mean so when the legislation in question threatens their favored morality. No one lives consistently by this maxim. Let us once and for all do away with this tired, errant maxim. Let us put it into the dustbin of history and recognize that the responsible use of political power can result in positive good and pushback against the culture of death. All legislation reflects some moral universe. The only question is, whose? Our God is a God of justice and righteousness, so we must insist that human law reflect eternal law (Psalm 89:14).

The world has speculated what a post-Roe world would entail. Because of Texas, we’re about to get a view in real-time. Pastors, it’s up to you to help paint a vision of that world in our local congregations. That means the pro-life rhetoric that Christians have rightly touted must be enfleshed with the incarnational love of Jesus Christ. We must give material aid and support to abortion-vulnerable women. The only way to deny the culture of death’s fearmongering is to demonstrate with tangible action that Christians will let no vulnerable women or unwanted children go unloved. We must, as the phrase popularly goes, “make abortion unthinkable.”

The readiness of the church to care for women is a vital externality, but one not essential to the basic integrity of the law’s purpose. At stake is whether the law will uphold life or make it optional. But if we do not show up when our fellow citizens need us most, if we do not commit ourselves to the common good, if we are not serious in our belief that every child is loved and wanted, what then is our pro-life witness? A hollow promise, that is what.

Andrew T. Walker is An Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a Fellow with The Ethics and Public Policy Center.

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EPPC Fellow Andrew T. Walker, Ph.D., researches and writes about the intersection of Christian ethics, public theology, and the moral principles that support civil society and sound government.

The Texas Heartbeat Bill Is a Preview of a Post-Roe World

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Published on September 1, 2021

National Review Online

By ALEXANDRA DESANCTIS

Abortion-rights supporters are outraged today over the fact that the Texas Heartbeat Act took effect at midnight, because the Supreme Court has yet to act on an emergency petition from abortion providers demanding that the Court block the law. The bipartisan statute prevents state officials from enforcing the law and instead grants private citizens the right to sue someone who helps a woman obtain an abortion, including the abortionist.

On Bench Memos yesterday afternoon, Ed Whelan had an excellent summary of the bill and the legal challenge, in which he makes the important point that the abortion providers challenging the statute “are trying to game the Court to rule on issues that, because of their own litigation strategy, no lower court has even addressed.” In other words, abortion providers “are seeking an advisory opinion in a case that should have been dismissed at the outset for absence of a live controversy.”

Despite what some panicked abortion supporters have argued this morning, the absence of Court action on the Texas law is not evidence that a majority of the justices are poised to strike down Roe v. Wade in the upcoming Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, to be heard next term. In reality, this outcome is a product of the legal strategy the abortion providers pursued: waiting to challenge the Texas statute and then rushing to the Supreme Court at the eleventh hour.

But the outraged reaction from abortion supporters to the Texas law’s being allowed to take effect is a helpful insight into what we might expect to witness if the Court does its job and reverses the decades of legal inanity propping up the shambles of Roe. In an email this morning fundraising off the “emergency” in Texas, Planned Parenthood described the present situation like this:

Someone will find out they’re pregnant, and they’ll know that abortion is the right choice for them. They may only be six or seven weeks pregnant — pretty early to find out. But when they go to schedule an appointment with an abortion provider, it will already be too late.

Because starting today, the majority of people in Texas seeking an abortion will be denied the care they need because of politicians trying to control their bodies and their personal decisions.

Of course, the “care they need” here refers to a procedure that intentionally ends the life of an unborn child. And rather than controlling “people’s” bodies and decisions, politicians are seeking to regulate a procedure that, again, intentionally ends the life of an unborn child. That Planned Parenthood disguises this reality in euphemisms is, as ever, especially telling.

Meanwhile, the fundraising plea from the American Civil Liberties Union this morning insists that the effects of the Texas law “will be immediate and devastating.”

This extreme and blatantly unconstitutional law bans abortions at six weeks – before many people even know they are pregnant. But, there’s more. The law also actively encourages private citizens to act as bounty hunters by awarding them at least $10,000 if they successfully sue another person for providing an abortion or assisting someone who gets an abortion at around six weeks of pregnancy.

Contrary to this rhetoric, it’s important to note that the law in Texas imposes no criminal penalties, and none of its civil provisions apply to a woman who seeks or obtains an abortion after a fetal heartbeat can be detected. But that fact is impossible to locate among nearly any media coverage, let alone in the rhetoric of abortion-rights groups.

Also of interest is that abortion-advocacy groups and activists have very obviously, and with much linguistic difficulty, begun avoiding the word “woman.” Planned Parenthood says “someone will find out they’re pregnant” and “people in Texas seeking an abortion.” The ACLU says “assisting someone who gets an abortion.” Rewire editor Imani Gandy says “there are pregnant people who have abortions scheduled who now are going to be forced to carry pregnancies to term.” (Emphasis mine.)

There was a time not very long ago when abortion advocates would have relished deploying the word “woman” in these circumstances — recall the success of the “war on women” rhetoric.

But not anymore. In an age when progressives are required to espouse the view that biological men, too, can be pregnant, or that biological women can be pregnant while identifying as men, no longer can the abortion-advocacy movement rely on the helpfully divisive rhetoric of abortion as a “women’s rights” issue.

Alexandra DeSanctis is a staff writer for National Review and a visiting fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

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EPPC Visiting Fellow Alexandra DeSanctis writes on abortion policy and the pro-life movement, as well as on other key topics at the intersection of politics, culture, and religion.

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A Supreme Court That Capitulates On Roe V. Wade Will Unleash A Whirlwind

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Published on August 30, 2021

The Federalist

By NATHANAEL BLAKE

It profits a man nothing to gain the world if he loses his soul—and the deal is even worse if the earthly gain is just a chance at the fleeting respect of a few law professors. Nonetheless, that is how the left is hoping to tempt Brett Kavanaugh as the Supreme Court considers a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade.

Writing at National Review Online, Ed Whelan observes that such a sales pitch from Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman “isn’t subtle.” Feldman does not attempt to argue that Roe and subsequent decisions such as Casey are correct as a matter of law and constitutional interpretation. Instead, he resorts to mean girl tactics—only cool justices get to guest lecture at the Ivy League table.

He offers Kavanaugh the approval of the left-wing legal establishment in exchange for voting to preserve the invented constitutional right to abortion on demand. Of course, Feldman cannot promise to deliver on his end of the bargain—he admits the left might still hate Kavanaugh even if Kavanaugh gives in to their demands.

This is just a more personal version of the left’s efforts to intimidate conservative judges, as seen in the recent threats to pack the court. Sometimes these tactics work, as seen in Chief Justice Roberts’ reported switch to save Obamacare, or in Anthony Kennedy’s vote in 1992 to stand by Roe v. Wade. But the consequences of unprincipled political calculation by the court cut both ways.

The justices should do their duty and follow the law and Constitution to the best of their abilities. In the case at hand, this means overturning Roe and Casey, which are legal abominations, exercises of raw power divorced from the text and history of the Constitution. If they do consider additional factors, they should only be further motivated to overturn Roe.

The most important consideration is the wickedness of the radical regime of abortion on demand established by Roe and confirmed by Casey. In the age of ultrasound, we know what abortion is, and who it kills. The images eagerly shared on social media and stuck to the fridge condemn the atrocity of our abortion regime, in which the child whose features can be seen on the screen, and whose movements can be felt in the womb, has less legal protection than livestock.

This acceptance of, and reliance on, the violence of abortion poisons society. It turns what ought to be the loving, primordial union of mother, father, and child into a battleground of selfish interests. Abortion hardens the hearts it doesn’t stop.

Overturning Roe will not in itself end these evils, for the justices are unlikely to extend 14th Amendment protections to the unborn, although there is an originalist case for doing so. Abortion policy would therefore return to the states, leaving the pro-life movement to face a grueling state-by-state fight. But at least our democratic victories will no longer be overridden by the caprice of federal judges.

Roe has damaged our republic and distorted our politics. It is the leading example of the Supreme Court acting as an unelected super-legislature and imposing its will on the nation, and upholding Roe will only further delegitimize the court.

It is not only leftist law professors and legacy media editorial boards who have opinions about these matters, Many Americans long ago realized that the Supreme Court often rules as it wills, not according to the law or Constitution. The justices may hate the ugliness of their confirmation hearings, but the court brought that on itself by becoming the national abortion policy tribunal.

Millions of voters have supported the conservative legal movement on the promise that it would fight to get courts out of the abortion business. Thus, if the Supreme Court, with a 6-3 Republican-appointed majority, voted to uphold Roe and Casey, the decision might well blow up the conservative legal movement for good. Most of the voters who care about the courts are not interested in Chevron deference or other (to a layperson) esoteric legal doctrines. Rather, they want Roe overturned.

Thus, upholding Roe would turbocharge populist critiques of the originalist project and its institutions. Although President Donald Trump picked some of these justices, their failures will not be held against him and other populists, but against the conservative legal establishment Trump relied upon in his selections.

Indeed, if the court stands by Roe it might upend the entire Republican Party, many of whose voters are tired of an establishment that overpromises and underdelivers. The full reckoning is unpredictable, but GOP self-immolation is a real possibility, leading to either Democratic dominance or a triumphant populist GOP (or both in succession). The Republican base will not shrug off another total betrayal.

The Supreme Court might attempt to split the baby and uphold the abortion restrictions at issue in Dobbs without overturning Roe and Casey. The specifics of this case makes that difficult, but there is nothing but their self-respect to keep the justices from trying.

Of course, that would just leave them back in the same place in a few more years. The time for the justices of the Supreme Court to get out of the abortion business is now—for the sake of unborn children, the Supreme Court, the country, and their own souls.

Nathanael Blake is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Photo Architect of the Capitol / Flickr

President Joe Biden on Wednesday blasted Texas’s abortion law, which went into effect on Wednesday, promising to “protect and defend” the right to abortion.

“Today, Texas law SB8 went into effect. This extreme Texas law blatantly violates the constitutional right established under Roe v. Wade and upheld as precedent for nearly half a century,” Biden said in a statement released by the White House:

The Texas law will significantly impair women’s access to the health care they need, particularly for communities of color and individuals with low incomes. And, outrageously, it deputizes private citizens to bring lawsuits against anyone who they believe has helped another person get an abortion, which might even include family members, health care workers, front desk staff at a health care clinic, or strangers with no connection to the individual.

“My administration is deeply committed to the constitutional right established in Roe v. Wade nearly five decades ago and will protect and defend that right,” he added.

Anti-abortion protesters wait outside the Supreme Court for a decision, Monday, June 29, 2020 in Washington on the Louisiana case, Russo v. June Medical Services LLC. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

On Wednesday, Texas became the first state in the nation to ban abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected. As Breitbart News reported, abortion providers “applied to the U.S. Supreme Court for an injunction, but the Court has not yet ruled on the matter – though could do so at any time – and the law, as passed by the Texas legislature and signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott (R), is now in effect”:

However, for major matters like this, standard procedure is for the justice supervising the relevant appeals court – in this case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit – to refer the application to his eight colleagues for the full Supreme Court to vote on the matter.

The abortion providers’ appeal comes after their hopes to block the law were thwarted over the weekend when the Fifth Circuit canceled a hearing initially planned for Monday. The district judge was blocked from granting a preliminary injunction before September 1.

Other Democrat lawmakers have reacted similar to Biden, accusing the Lone Star State of taking away “reproductive rights” from women.

“States like Texas have doubled down on their efforts to strip away reproductive rights. I told @TeenVogue: Congress needs to show more courage, step up and protect access to abortion,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said. “And if we need to get rid of the filibuster to do it, so be it.”